Why do living things die?

Question

Why do living things die?

Answer 1

your heart can only beat for so long...

Answer 2

it's the aging process that slowly shut down your body functions. unfortunately, this process is not reversible.

Answer 3

Because they can not change parts.

Answer 4

Its the way of nature and when one things dies it help. Because that means that another thing can come into place

Answer 5

The best answer I have seen to this comes from a Jared Diamond book, and is by analogy with cars.  AT some point the cost of repair and maintenance is simply too high, it is better to get a new car.

In evolutionary terms this also makes sense. The constant reapair of the slow  (sometimes not so slow) accumulation of mistakes in replication of individual cells becomes too consuming in energy and time to do anything else, such as reproduce.  If they reproduced before that stage they have good chances of passing on their genes.  But no matter how much care is taken in keeping yourself alive and healthy eventually something will have to give.  In humans we all start to show signs of aging and in healthy people the onset is not particularly sudden (if lucky) but it is general.  We tend to lose our sensitivity to taste, sight, hearing, smell at about the same time

Honest people will tell you it is easy to detect after forty, so will doctors.  In fact the only thing that lasts at full strength for years after the peak years of s*x are brains.  In groups where aquired knowledge outweighs instincts it makes sense to survive for at least some time after reproducing.  Most insects don't.  In fact most animals in general tend to drop dead as soon as they can't reproduce.  In this trait humans especially and primates generally are freakish.

Seems to me sometimes they should be a bit more grateful that they live as long as they do and less bitter about dying at all.  ANd at other times I think maybe the wrong people live all too long anyway.

Answer 6

Hi

Every living thing is made up of millions of cell it may be plant r animal and Human being as the cells get older it may  loose it funtioning and their is change when this occur naturely all living thing will die  

Answer 7

Death is part of the same theory of evolution you learned about in school.  All things die, thus making way for new life.  Without death there could be no evolutionary change over time.